Random Thoughts 2022

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Stephanie Meyer published a book called ‘Midnight Sun’. It is a retelling of her famous Twilight novel from the perspective of the male love interest, a vampire named Edward. In 2009, when the Twilight series was all the rage, I was fourteen years old. I was enamoured, to be honest. My parents forbade me from reading vampire romance so reading in the dark, in secret, made it all the more glorious. Oh I savoured every word. Anyway. All this is to say that hearing about Midnight Sun sparked some curiousity so I read some reviews and watched some ‘booktubers’ talking about it and have come to the conclusion that my 27 year old self really doesn’t have the time to read about the inner thinkings of a hundred and something year old vampire who decides, with the gift of immortality, to spend time in a highschool with sixteen year olds, and falls in love with one of them. I mean. I am 27. If I was immortal, highschool would be the last place I would spend my time, my goodness.

I realised this week, when my 2 year old had his first ever tummy bug, that I have to put my own tummy bug on hold in order to deal with his. I had to still rush up and down stairs, cleaning out vomit from sheets and floors and buckets, disinfecting everything. I had to make sure he was hydrated, and lie next to him ready with the bucket at his slightest stir. It’s amazing how the human body works. One minute I was so exhausted I couldn’t get off the sofa, and the next I was hurtling across the room to catch my child, who was shivering and hot and had vomit in his hair. Lovely.

There is also a ‘petrol shortage’ in the UK. I think it’s just a combination of panic-buying and a shortage of lorry drivers due to Brexit. Funny that, isn’t it. Leavers were worried ‘foreigners’ were taking all their jobs… now not enough ‘foreigners’ are taking the jobs. Funny funny irony. Thankfully we do not use our car much, so we are alright. But I have heard tales of ambulances not being able to fuel up due to the ‘shortage’ and have seen plenty of memes about ‘loo roll wankers’ being the same douchebags who are filling up plastic water bottles with petrol because this is apparently the end of times and what do we need most in an apocalypse? Petrol. Oh. Humanity.

I spend a lot of time thinking but my thoughts are to-do lists.

2026: Why I am publishing this list of 2022 thoughts now, I have no idea. I came across it in my drafts folder and sentiments sure have changed in 4 years. My 2 year old is now almost 7, and I have a nearly 5 year old, and my thoughts are occupied by far more complex things! But why not publish this, why ever not.

That Golden Brown Butter

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Today I fried samosas in ghee. I didn’t know I could do that, but given my newfound knowledge about the inflammatory effects of refined oils and seed oils, and the fact we only ever use olive oil, butter or ghee for cooking – I was so averse to frying samosas in the only way I ever knew we could fry them; in sunflower oil.

So I avoided ChatGPT, and went straight to Google, to ask if I could fry samosas in ghee. Google gave me the AI answer, but I bypassed it and scrolled down to an article written by a Pakistani lady who said frying samosas in ghee was better because it results in a deliciously nutty flavour.

So we did it. We made a spicy potato filling, just like my mum makes – all my samosa-making skills come from my mum, who is the queen of homemade samosas, and has had us trained from childhood in the art of wrapping them to form perfect triangles. We fried them till golden brown and crispy. We dipped them in ketchup (because I am not skilled enough to make a chutney of any kind, and my mum always gave us ketchup). We ate them together, me and my two munchkins, who are on a two-week holiday from school, so it really did feel like our old home-schooling days.

Did you know you could fry things in ghee?

The Wind in My Willows

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Daily writing prompt
If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
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Why, it would say, look for the beauty in nature to ground yourself. That is what it would say.

I find myself yearning for cold winds over rugged plains and hills, scraggly rocks, hours of exploration through misty woods and amid raging shores. I find myself yearning for the silence of the hills, interrupted by the occasional moo of a forlorn cow or the caw of an impudent crow just alighting in a tree above. I find myself yearning for trees that live as though they are governed by no man, thick woody trunks and roots weaving over each other, knobbled with age and a wisdom only hundreds of years can bestow upon them.

I find myself missing this simple thing that I used to do all the time, which I took for granted at the time, but which truly held all the treasures in life:

Waking up of a morning, in whatever season you please, and seeing sunshine. Deciding in that moment to pack a bag with sandwiches, boiled eggs, carrots sliced into thick sticks, cucumbers cut in the same way. Perhaps some apples left in the pantry and some digestives found shoved in the back of a cupboard. A sandwich bag filled with nuts, another with dates. Or raisins. Or nothing. Bottles of water filled at the cold kitchen tap. Children up, changed, breakfasted on toast, and bundled up if it was winter or prepared with wellies and raincoats if it was summer – because you cannot trust the British sunshine always – and then, mercy of mercies, all packed into a car. A blessed thing, is a car.

And then, because we lived in a town in the Cheshire countryside, a 30-40 minute drive into the country. Through windey little lanes and in amongst ancient oaks and horse chestnuts. Soon we come somewhere. A hill to climb or a forest to meander through – we park in a lay-by or a little stoney car park that is empty and you don’t need to pay because people rarely come here. Everybody is at school you see. My kids are not. We do school everywhere.

Did.

Did school everywhere.

And we would walk all day. Sometimes through rose gardens and manor kitchen gardens and along well-kept lawns fringed with espalier apple and pear trees perfectly formed against brick walls. Sometimes trek up a stoney path until we reached a derelict castle on top of a hill, from which we would be able to see the whole of Cheshire – Jodrell Bank there in the distance, Mow Cop in a different direction. Wind in our faces, heavy clouds chasing bright sunshine, biscuits and apples as our relished fuel after a long (and whiny!!) climb. Little legs and little voices and little hands slipping into mine. Then screams of laughter and playing and me lying back on the grass and staring at the vast vast sky and feeling… so free and happy.

We would get home at sunset – be that 4pm or 8pm, exhausted but happy, bone-tired in the way that would let you sleep sound and heavy. I would bathe the kids, wash them of the mud and dirt they would inevitably accumulate in their free exploration, and we would have a small dinner together. Sometimes we would watch Somebody Feed Phill with our bedtime warm milk and biscuit (tea for me, thanks) – Phill with his friendly eyes and his love of humanity (and food!). Then a story, then bed. I would fall deliciously asleep with the children, fully aware of how privileged I was in my freedom and safety.

I was a lucky girl. I was so lucky for those two years of my life. I was tired and sore and complained but my oh my, with all the glorious countryside at my fingertips – why I could walk half an hour from my home and be in the middle of nowhere – I was on top of the world.

And I miss that now, stuck here in a metropolis. We’ll find our nature but it will be short lived because you can’t make a habit of going out in 50C heat.

My billboard would say, look for the beauty in nature to ground yourself.

Because it always, always, always grounded me. I have never felt such happiness or contentment as in the times I have spent in nature. And I hope to do plenty more of it in my lifetime.

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John Constable (1816) – countryside painting of Wivenhoe Park, Essex.

On Naming Things

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In an attempt to bring joy back into my life in what seems like a season of ill-will, misfortune and tired depression, I will talk today about something that brings me joy. It’s my daughter’s penchant for naming all her toys – apt names sometimes, or names that simply tickle her fancy at the time of the naming ceremony.

Her first named doll is a little bald thing with the most intense eyes and the grimiest all-in-one outfit one ever did see. When she first obtained the doll, three years ago now, my daughter had just turned two. She was enamoured with an Arabic song about seagulls flapping their wings, and one of the phrases in the song was ‘the seagull flapped it’s wings, flap flap!’. So she named her doll ‘Hallaqa Hallaq’ – which means ‘flap flap’. In fact, the doll’s name is the entire phrase but she deigned to shorten it for her own ease of play.

Then she has Foxy – which is a little white fox. Cuddly-cuddly Elephant is a little purple elephant no bigger than my hand. It’s furry and has large imploring purple eyes. She has Button, a little rag-doll with a singular button on its dress. Kung-Fu Panda, which is a panda dressed as a dragon which her father got her from China in celebration of the Chinese new year. She has Goldilocks, which is a plump little marshmallow creature that is shapeless and designed, I suppose, to be ‘cute’. Not in anyway resembling the real Goldilocks – but the name took her fancy and now we can’t see that marshmallow thing as anything other than Goldilocks! And Llamery Sparkle is a colourful little Llama who has a pair of sparkling eyes.

Flower Nice is a velvety puffy ladybird with large black beads for eyes. She followed her dad all around the supermarket the day Flower Nice was procured begging him to buy it for her. He took one look at the price tag and shook his head. But she wouldn’t let up. She implored with her large eyes, she took his hand and kissed it, she hugged and rocked the silly stuffed ladybird as if it would break her heart to part from it. He eventually gave in, of course. Who can resist the charms of an enamoured little three year old?! What will you name her, I asked, once the ladybird was paid for and safely back in her arms. Flower nice, she replied, because flowers are nice and nice because she is nice.

All of this to say, I never named a thing as a child. I had a doll but she certainly had no name, and was subject to all sorts of experimentation by myself and my sister. Bathed, hung, parachuted down the side of an apartment building – no, we did not name her. But my daughter insists on naming everything that can be constituted personage – including ants and moths that happen her way. And that, my friends, brings me much joy.

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Girl, dolls and toys. Honor Appleton

Aversions

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I am off coffee. Off standing in a little coffee bar in some obscure coffee shop somewhere in Italy, ordering an espresso with whipped cream and one of those triangular pastries that are a hundred layers of thin crusty sweetness filled with a delicate custard. Off an iced spanish latte on a hot day. Off a hot Americano in a paper cup from a self-dispensing coffee machine which, for the equivalent of £1.75 in this country’s currency, is actually pretty spectacular. Warm, roasted, hints of dark chocolate and a tiny whiff of berry, nutty and slightly butterscotchy, gives you just enough shakes for a one hour weightlifting session during which you gulp down 1.5L of water and after which you have a high protein avocado, cottage cheese and egg toast. Balance.

I am off a small cappuccino with the perfect medium roast espresso, milk whipped till just creamy froth, not bubbly like they always manage to do in the UK. UK coffee is awful. my jet-setting self has learned. But nobody does tea like the UK. A solid mug of English Breakfast with the right splash of milk and on the side, chocolate chip shortbread. ASDA does a great version, and so does Tesco. But if you’re feeling fancy you’ll get the Walkers one because that, my friends, is the original. Custard creams, Fox’s Golden crunch creams – delicious! A digestive if nothing else avails itself. My husband introduced me to his post-gym snack which I fear is heavily Americanised but I cannot fault it. A plain digestive – McVities of course, nobody does it like them – with a smearing of peanut butter and a little dollop of jam. A PB&J digestive! Horror of horrors, but horrifically good.

Anyway I am also off tea.

Speaking of tea, nobody does sweet tea like the Pakistanis. Sweet black tea, I mean. Boiled with cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger, peppercorns, milk, a generous heap of sugar. Some people use evaporated milk and now that is fancy! Chai. Not a chai latte although I am partial to that. But chai, cooked in a pan, strained into a flask and taken to the top of Mow Crop on a cold and icy Christmas day in Cheshire. That is where we were last Christmas. We had homemade pasties to go with it and we saw one other family and the icy wind bit our faces and fingertips but our bodies were warmed with the rich spicy sweetness of chai.

I am off all of it, folks. Because when my body is preparing to grow a child, I become averse to my favourite beverages. And that is what is happening.

Am I OKAY?

No. I am shocked, scared, confused. Crying, screaming, throwing up – literally to the latter. I am not prepared, physically nor mentally. Why, I thought to myself this morning as I walked my two children into school, I only have two hands by which to hold my current kids. Do I have enough love for three?

Of course I do. Of course I do. I have enough love for as many children as I may have. Just right now I miss feeling well. I miss feeling okay. I am just tired and sick. But it will be okay. We will be okay.

My Sunshine Girl

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Daily writing prompt
Tell us one thing you hope people say about you.
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You know, I always tell my daughter that she is my sunshine girl. The sun shines out of her large beautiful eyes and beams out of her gorgeous big smile. She always thinks good of others, even the mean little four year olds at school who say hurtful things to her. ‘I think she forgot she was my friend Mama,‘ she says, ‘or I think she just didn’t know I liked her.‘

‘Did what they did to you hurt you in your heart?’ I ask gently, and the little half smile vanishes from her face and her mouth turns down against her will. ‘No Mama,’ she says stoutly, ‘in my FEELINGS.’

Okay okay. She is such a sensitive little soul. If you tell her off she backs away with a big smile on her face but when you inspect it further her eyes are brimming with tears that are on the cusp of falling over the edge of her lashes, and her smile is wobbly. I ask if she is okay and she nods and if pressed about it the little tears pour down her cheeks in tragic rivulets.

But she is my sunshine child. Her laugh echoes through the house and if she wonders off in a supermarket her high cheery little voice is my beacon to her. She is loud and clumsy and full of ringlets and chubby cuddles. Whenever I looked at her when she was a baby her fat little legs would cycle into a frenzy and her smiles became little squeals of excitement. I never saw such happiness in someone when they looked at me, my heart would rise up with my own joy to meet hers. She is still this way when we have visitors, when she spies me after her day at school, when I surprise her while she is out shopping with her dad, when her grandma comes to visit – little dances of joy and rapture, hugs galore, never stingy with her affection. I missed you! You’re my favourite person in the whole whole world… everyone is her favourite.

People say about her – she is the spreader of joy. Where is my happy little girl, my mum always asks. We named her after the night, a night of sparkling stars and a glorious moon, only made so because of the generosity of the sun.

So when I think about what I hope people say about me, I think, I want them to say ‘she appreciates the good in others’ – and only so because my daughter taught me when she came into this world 26 years after I did, to only seek the good in others.

That is how you be a sunshine girl.

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What on earth are you good at?

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I have had to ponder deeply on this because, like many of the folk who grew up with dysfunctional parents, I can’t seem to think of things I am good at.
It’s a thing some like to call ‘low self esteem’. When I was a teenager, I used to call it my ‘inferiority complex’ and I nursed it like one nurses a scatty pet that they are ashamed of but cannot live without. I made jokes about it to my friends and it was almost like a shield disguised as a badge of honour behind which I shoved all my insecurities like dirty laundry.

I am good at cooking. Mostly because I love to eat. Flavours and ingredients, I was told once by a dear old friend of my mother’s, are like paints on a palette. It takes a true artist to weave them together to make something that truly inspires emotion in the people who eat it. She told me this one day when she brought a box of spaghetti bolognese over. My mother had been hospitalised for three weeks because of a retina detachment – the horrendous result of yet another dysfunctional altercation with my father – and so this friend of hers would pop by everyday when we got home from school and bring us some of her delicious food (oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!) and check in on us. What she said that day, about cooking being like art, really stuck with me. I like to think I am a creative, and some of my best creativity has come through in delicious meals I have prepared for people. My favourite thing is when people eat food I have made and are in raptures over it. Yes, I think to myself, this piece of art was well enjoyed.

I am good at drawing – I used to wake up at the crack of dawn before my family. Reflecting on why I did this – being around my family wasn’t a restful experience. I always felt some sort of discomfort or urgency. Discontentment from either of my parents that I wasn’t working hard enough or I was reading too much and neglecting my school work, or I ought not to be sitting around I ought to be doing a chore… So I would wake up at the crack of dawn before anybody could bother me and I would get my paints out (someone had gifted me a set of acrylics – real artist acrylics – and I truly felt I was a renaissance painter!) and paint away on the balcony for a few hours before it got too hot to be outside. I moved onto pastels after that and then discovered a love for watercolours. Then I grew older and became depressed and stopped all that for a while. But whenever inspiration hits me and I take up a brush, I am always pleased with the result and I know I can do it really well.

I am good at writing – but I don’t often make time for it, and that is on me.

I think I have good intuition and am good at deciphering people’s emotions – but I am not certain of it. I think I am good at analysing a person and understanding them on a fundamental level. Their whys and wherefores, so to speak.

What are you good at?

[25]

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Twelve years ago on this day I created a blog on WordPress and published my first post ever.

I was nineteen years old and starting a new chapter of life. Now I am 31, and I believe I have turned the page on a fresh chapter. Not such a happy one, but there is some sweetness. Like the thorn in the stalk of a rose.

Now I have been privy to the darkest parts of the human brain, and my eyes have been prodded sharply to the grim reality of mental clarity. One must feel pain, I have learnt, in order to be mentally healthy.

Feel vulnerable, folks. Feel afraid. Feel lonely. Feel the feelings. It’s the only way to heal yourself and grow in a healthy way.

I am, as they say, a ‘grown ass woman’ and Lord do I feel it – in the spongy crevices of my brain, which, frankly, feel awfully mushy and soft right now, as well as in the crevices of my face, which are gradually getting deeper with each passing year. Soon they will be grand canyons through which the memories of the years will ricochet, etching themselves ever more firmly into my skin.

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[24]

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In the darkness of the night, the stars tear holes in the black canvas shrouding the earth so they can peep through, decorating the sky with twinkling lights, playing hide and seek with each other and shooting at each other through the silent vacuum of the universe.

A shadow slinks behind the walls of houses. It creeps through the stinking back alleys where rubbish bins line the brick walls neatly, oozing bin juice. It pauses, sniffs, and slinks into an open bin. It guzzles, and slips out again, prowling for more. Its breath rattles in its throat, almost like a death rattle, and as it climbs out of yet another bin, its large, round belly glows in the dim light from the street lamps just outside the alleyway.

Another creature, with the same protruding belly and glowing eyes, slinks around the corner. It stops, eyeing its counterpart on the bin, and a low snarl starts in its throat. Hunger propels its forward, a deep, prolonged ache to fill an unknown void, and it rolls into the dustbin and begins to scavenge for food.

The rattling sound echoes through the alleyway, and a window above is thrown open. Light floods over the cobbles, and a low hiss emanates from the dustbin, as both creatures shy away from the brightness.

‘The cats are in the bins again, Hank!’

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[23]

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Ten years ago, I lost myself.

I turned sixteen, you see. All kinds of things were happening to me. My mind was foreign, alien. My body was a trap. It was a tumultuous time. When one is sixteen, one’s senses are heightened. Sadness is multiplied and happiness is mountainous.

I chose to let someone in my life when I was seventeen. I say chose, because I did choose. I chose to contact. I chose to text. I chose to call. I chose to visit. I chose to allow someone to violate me. Mentally. Physically. I chose to let them into the most vulnerable parts of my brain. My self. I let them rearrange my mind as they saw fit.

I became sparrow-like. Withdrawn.

They told me I was naive, and I acted so.

They told me I was not intelligent, and I became dumb.

My bubbly self bubbled as I was submerged in a water so murky and black that I could not see my hands when I stretched them before me.

I rode on waves of anxiety, and sailed down roads of relief.

When I finally disentangled myself, in a moment of sudden clarity, the world suddenly became black.

I stood up, in that moment. I remember. I stood up and I shouted, ‘Who do you think you are!!!???’

I was shaking in fear, but I did do that. And all those years (2 years) melted away from me, and I woke up, groggy, shocked, and astounded that I had let myself wonder so far. So far from the path. So lost in the woods.

I told myself I was brought up properly. I told myself I had a healthy and happy childhood. I told myself, all of this, was my own fault. And yes, of course it was.

But I am 31 now. And my mind is more clear than it was even 2 years ago. Things that would have terrified me even three years ago – a phone call, an email, a letter, a message. A ringtone. A dream. A hacking laugh… These things only make me angry now. And sad.

I am so sad that I let that young, innocent, bubbly, happy little girl into the hands of a devil.

I am so sorry and sad.

I wish I was taken care of. Listened to. Heard. Protected.

I wish I had a better story to tell.

If I had been my adult, I think I would have hugged my little self. Held her. Told her she was worthy and important. Not told her it was her fault. And she should know better. Sometimes at 16, you don’t know better. You can’t.

And if he reads this – ever, I hope he knows that I wish he would die. I would revel in his death.